Looking at aid effectiveness through a sector lens has provided a significant source of information and lessons for the aid effectiveness agenda. To understand the real impact of efforts to improve aid effectiveness – as outlined in the Paris Declaration and Accra Agenda for Action - looking at the impacts on sectors such as health, education, water and sanitation or infrastructure is one, effective way to assess and measure progress, understand behavioural change and to see tangible results towards improving lives: the end goal of all development efforts.

The Task Team on Health as a Tracer Sector (TT HATS) is a multi-stakeholder international health forum which includes senior-level specialists in aid effectiveness and health from multilateral institutions, bilateral development agencies, developing countries and NGOs. It provided the Working Party on Aid Effectiveness with concrete illustrations of progress and remaining bottlenecks in the implementation of the Paris Declaration and Accra Agenda for Action in the health sector and formulate recommendations for progress towards more effective health aid.

Health as a tracer sector

The health sector highlights many of the challenges faced by people working in development today. Because of its complexity, the health sector provides lessons that can be useful for adapting and fine-tuning the aid effectiveness framework. For example:

FragmentationIn 2006, in 29 countries in sub-Saharan Africa 18 and 23 donors were active in the health sector, with a small number of these accounting for the majority of aid (OECD report).

Innovative financing for developmentWith around 100 global health partnerships across the globe today, innovative ways of funding or delivering health inputs and increasing participation of non-traditional donors has contributed to achieving significant results in health. However, this has lead to complex governance and aid management arrangements, leading to duplication of efforts and fragmented approached at global and national levels. Whilst diversity brings many benefits, it is a challenge for country ownership, alignment, national systems and harmonisation.

Achieving the MDGsThe health sector provides a strong link with the Millennium Development Goals – three of which directly relate to health. While some progress has been made in achieving the health MDGs, much more needs to be done to improve the health status of developing countries

This report - produced by the Task Team on Health as a Tracer Sector - synthesises the findings and lessons learned about aid effectiveness from the health sector. Progress and Challenges in Aid Effectiveness focusses on progress in implementing the Paris Declaration principles and on the contribution of aid effectiveness in achieving better results in health, with an analysis of the role of China, Brazil, India and Russia in the health sector in partner countries and the role of aid in supporting the effective contribution of the private sector in the sub-Saharan African health sector. Lessons from the health sector can be widely shared with a view to fostering progress in aid and development policies beyond the health sector itself.

Read the interim report online: Good Practice in Applying the Paris Declaration at Sector Level: Interim Report on Health as a Tracer Sector